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Added by: Jie Gao
Summary: Drawing on literature from the dual-processing tradition in psychology, this paper tries to explain why contemplation of an imaginary particular may have cognitive and motivational effects that differ from those evoked by an abstract description of the same content, and hence, why thought experiments may be effective devices for conceptual reconfiguration. It suggests that by presenting content in a suitably concrete way, thought experiments recruit representational schemas that were otherwise inactive, thereby evoking responses that may run counter to those evoked by alternative presentations of relevantly similar content.Glaude, Eddie S.. In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America2007, University of Chicago Press.-
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Bart Schultz
Publisher's Note: In this timely book, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., one of our nation's rising young African American intellectuals, makes an impassioned plea for black America to address its social problems by recourse to experience and with an eye set on the promise and potential of the future, rather than the fixed ideas and categories of the past. Central to Glaude's mission is a rehabilitation of philosopher John Dewey, whose ideas, he argues, can be fruitfully applied to a renewal of African American politics. According to Glaude, Dewey's pragmatism, when attentive to the darker dimensions of life - or what we often speak of as the blues - can address many of the conceptual problems that plague contemporary African American discourse. How blacks think about themselves, how they imagine their own history, and how they conceive of their own actions can be rendered in ways that escape bad ways of thinking that assume a tendentious political unity among African Americans simply because they are black, or that short-circuit imaginative responses to problems confronting actual black people. Drawing deeply on black religious thought and literature, In a Shade of Blue seeks to dislodge such crude and simplistic thinking, and replace it with a deeper understanding of and appreciation for black life in all its variety and intricacy. Only when black political leaders acknowledge such complexity, Glaude argues, can the real-life sufferings of many African Americans be remedied. Heady, inspirational, and brimming with practical wisdom, In a Shade of Blue is a remarkable work of political commentary on a scale rarely seen today. To follow its trajectory is to learn how African Americans arrived at this critical moment in their history and to envision where they might head in the twenty-first centuryComment: A really terrific, historically sophisticated work that highlights how philosophical pragmatism can be developed in connection with critical race theory.
Goldstein, Rebecca. Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away2014, Pantheon Books.-
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Added by: Jamie Collin
Publisher's Note: Imagine that Plato came to life in the twenty-first century and embarked on a multi-city speaking tour. How would he mediate a debate between a Freudian psychoanalyst and a 'tiger mum' on how to raise the perfect child? How would he handle the host of a right-wing news program who denies there can be morality without religion? What would Plato make of Google, and of the idea that knowledge can be crowdsourced rather than reasoned out by experts? Plato at the Googleplex is acclaimed thinker Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's dazzling investigation of these conundra. With a philosopher's depth and erudition and a novelist's imagination and wit, Goldstein probes the deepest issues confronting us by allowing us to eavesdrop on Plato as he takes on the modern world; it is a stunningly original plunge into the drama of philosophy, revealing its hidden role in today's debates on religion, morality, politics and science.Comment: Useful in a general intro to philosophy course. This is partcularly suited for a general introduction course because it touches on a number of disparate parts of philosophy, and because it provides arguments for the continued value of philosophy.
Guenther, Lisa. Critical Phenomenology2019, In 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology, ed. Gail Weiss, Ann Murphy and Gayle Salamon. Northwestern University Press, pp. 11-16-
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Added by: Tomasz Zyglewicz, Shannon Brick, Michael GreerAbstract:
Phenomenology, the philosophical method that seeks to uncover the taken-for-granted presuppositions, habits, and norms that structure everyday experience, is increasingly framed by ethical and political concerns. Critical phenomenology foregrounds experiences of marginalization, oppression, and power in order to identify and transform common experiences of injustice that render “the familiar” a site of oppression for many. In Fifty Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology, leading scholars present fresh readings of classic phenomenological topics and introduce newer concepts developed by feminist theorists, critical race theorists, disability theorists, and queer and trans theorists that capture aspects of lived experience that have traditionally been neglected. By centering historically marginalized perspectives, the chapters in this book breathe new life into the phenomenological tradition and reveal its ethical, social, and political promise. This volume will be an invaluable resource for teaching and research in continental philosophy; feminist, gender, and sexuality studies; critical race theory; disability studies; cultural studies; and critical theory more generally.Comment (from this Blueprint): Lisa Guenther, author of the 2015 book "Solidarity Confinement: Social Death and its Afterlives," gives a quick overview of "critical phenomenology" and how it is different from classical phenomenology. The boundaries of critical phenomenology are still being drawn, but Guenther's concise explanation has already become canon. Understanding, in broad brush strokes, what critical phenomenology is will be important to engage with many conversations on feminist philosophy, especially in the continental tradition, since feminist theorists (inspired by Simone de Beavoir and Frantz Fanon) often appeal to lived experience in their theorizing of oppression.
Haaparanta, Leila. The Relations between Logic and Philosophy, 1874-19312009, In Leila Haaparanta (ed.), The Development of Modern Logic. Oxford University Press-
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Added by: Franci MangravitiAbstract:
This chapter gives a survey of the field of philosophy where the philosophical foundations of modern logic were discussed and where such themes of logic were discussed that were on the borderline between logic and other branches of the philosophical enterprise, such as metaphysics and epistemology. The contributions made by Gottlob Frege and Charles Peirce are included since their work in logic is closely related to and also strongly motivated by their philosophical views and interests. In addition, the chapter pays attention to a few philosophers to whom logic amounted to traditional Aristotelian logic and to those who commented on the nature of logic from a philosophical perspective without making any significant contribution to the development of formal logic.
Comment: Could be used in a history of logic course, as an overview of developments at the turn of the century. It spends a lot of time contextualizing and comparing Frege and Husserl's philosophies of logic, so it could also be a good further reading for a course focusing on either of them. The text assumes almost no previous knowledge of logic, or of the authors in question.
Harte, Verity. Plato on Parts and Wholes: The Metaphysics of Structure2002, Oxford University Press-
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, Contributed by: Quentin PharrPublisher’s Note:
This book is an examination of Plato's treatment of the relation between a whole and its parts in a group of Plato's later works: the Theaetetus, Parmenides, Sophist, Philebus, and Timaeus. Plato's discussions of part and whole in these texts fall into two distinct groups: a problematic one in which he explores, without endorsing, a model of composition as identity; and another in which he develops an alternative to this rejected model. Each model is concerned with the nature of composition of a whole from its parts, such that a whole is an individual, rather than a mere collection or heap. According to the problematic model of composition, a whole is identical to its many parts, that is, the relation of many parts to one whole is just the relation of identity. This model is shown to have the paradoxical consequence that the same thing(s) is (or are) both one thing and many things, and for this reason, amongst others, it cannot support an adequate account of composition. According to the alternative model of composition, wholes of parts are contentful structures (or, instances of such structures), whose parts get their identity only in the context of the whole they compose. Plato presents the structure of such wholes as the proper objects of Platonic science: essentially irreducible, intelligible, and normative in character.Comment: This text is perfect for advanced students studying either mereology or ancient philosophical metaphysics. It connects ancient debates on the relations between parts and wholes to modern debates - but, it does not do so at the cost of deviating too much from Plato's texts or the ancient philosophical context. Prior readings of several of Plato's texts are advised, as well as some understanding of recent mereological debates, in order to fully engage with Harte's work.
Haslanger, Sally. Resisting reality: Social Construction and Social Critique2012, OUP USA.-
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Added by: Laura Jimenez
Publisher's Note: Contemporary theorists use the term "social construction" with the aim of exposing how what's purportedly "natural" is often at least partly social and, more specifically, how this masking of the social is politically significant. In these previously published essays, Sally Haslanger draws on insights from feminist and critical race theory to explore and develop the idea that gender and race are positions within a structure of social relations. On this interpretation, the point of saying that gender and race are socially constructed is not to make a causal claim about the origins of our concepts of gender and race, or to take a stand in the nature/nurture debate, but to locate these categories within a realist social ontology. This is politically important, for by theorizing how gender and race fit within different structures of social relations we are better able to identify and combat forms of systematic injustice. Although the central essays of the book focus on a critical social realism about gender and race, these accounts function as case studies for a broader critical social realism.Comment: The book as a whole explores the interface between analytic philosophy and critical theory. As it is a collection of essays, particular chapters can easily be used separately, some serving as introductory, others as more advanced readings. It could be of interest for undergraduate or postgraduate courses in political philosophy, philosophy of language and philosophical methodology.
Haslanger, Sally. Changing the Ideology and Culture of Philosophy: Not by Reason (Alone)2007, Hypatia, 23 (2): 210–23.-
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Added by: Rebecca BuxtonAbstract:
There is a deep well of rage inside of me. Rage about how I as an individual have been treated in philosophy; rage about how others I know have been treated; and rage about the conditions that I'm sure affect many women and minorities in philosophy, and have caused many others to leave. Most of the time I suppress this rage and keep it sealed away. Until I came to MIT in 1998, I was in a constant dialogue with myself about whether to quit philosophy, even give up tenure, to do something else. In spite of my deep love for philosophy, it just didn't seem worth it. And I am one of the very lucky ones, one of the ones who has been successful by the dominant standards of the profession. Whatever the numbers say about women and minorities in philosophy, numbers don't begin to tell the story. Things may be getting better in some contexts, but they are far from acceptable.Comment (from this Blueprint): In her 2007 paper, Haslanger sets out the situation of women in philosophy with a particular focus on instutional academic settings. This paper discusses how women are excluded from philosophy (both contemporary and historical) as well as thinking about disciplnary boundaries: why is it that feminist philosophy is not often thought of as 'real' philosophy?
Haslanger, Sally. Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them To Be?2000, Nous 34(1): 31-55.-
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Added by: Carl Fox
Abstract: This paper proposes social constructionist accounts of gender and race. The focus of the inquiry--inquiry aiming to provide resources for feminist and antiracist projects--are the social positions of those marked for privilege or subordination by observed or imagined features assumed to be relevant to reproductive function, or geographical origins. I develop these ideas and propose that other gendered and racialized phenomena are usefully demarcated and explained by reference to these social positions. In doing so, I address the concern that attempts to define race or gender are misguided because they either assume a false commonality or marginalize some members of the group in question.Comment: Seminal reading for modules on gender or race.
Henry Odera Oruka. Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy1990, Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill-
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Added by: Sara Peppe, Contributed by: Jonathan EgidPublisher’s Note:
Sage Philosophy is an anthology of three main parts: Part one contains papers by Odera Oruka clearing the way and arguing about his research over the last decade on indigenous sages in Kenya. Part Two introduces verbatim interviews with a given number of those sages, while Part Three consists of published papers by scholars who are critics or commentators on the Oruka project. The author has spent the last decade in Kenya carrying out his research. It is the general stand of the book that the sages turn out to be thinkers or philosophers in no trivial sense, despite their lack of modern formal education. This study is a critique for all those scholars who hitherto have found no practice of critical philosophy in traditional Africa.
Comment: A great anthology broken down in three parts, including sages about Kenyan culture and cognate interviews with a final academic, in-depth, analysis. Great book for building knowledge about the Kenyan culture to be used as an overview on the theme.
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Gendler, Tamar Szabó. Philosophical thought experiments, intuitions, and cognitive equilibrium
2007, French, Peter A. & Wettstein, Howard K. (eds). Philosophy and Empirical. Oxford: Blackwell. 68-89.
Comment: In this interesting paper, Gendler elucidates the role and nature of intuition in the light of current philosophical practice. It is a good material for teaching on philosophical intuitions and experimental philosophy.